Starting A Forum

How do you know what topic to do when you want to start a forum? I know that you can literally do it on anything, but I would want to do it on something that a lot of people would also like. I mean obviously I wouldn't stray from what I know, but I still want to appeal to what other people like. So, how do you know what will appeal to people?

You don't have to be knowledgeable! I run a forum for writers and artists and honestly some of the stuff I learn there has me realising how little I know!

Just pick a topic you're passionate about, regardless of your knowledge, and use the forum as a platform to share what you learn and to learn more. If you're not passionate about it it won't matter how much you know because you will abandon it. It will become a drag and work and you will jump ship and swim away faster than you thought you ever could . (speaking from experience)

Creating a forum is the easy part but getting it active is where the real work will come into it. So yes the best way is to find a topic or theme that you will really be able to add value to and is unique to your member base that you have in mind. Remember many forums can have the same base topic or theme but it will depend on the individual on how they bring it all together in their forum as to how popular it will be.

Another thing to consider is to try and have a good core group that will help you post up content that is unique and not copied and pasted straight into your forum, search engines don't rank you well on duplicated content overall. You will also need to make your new forum seem active and a nice place to just hand out and this is not always easy.

This is where your core group will come in keeping threads alive for a least a short period so you don't end up with loads of threads that have no further activity in them. Members also seem to enjoy photos but this once again would depend on what your forum is all about as some might not be image rich overall.

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